Am not I Christopher Sly--old Sly's son of Burton Heath by birth a pedlar, by education a cardmaker, by transmutation a bearherd, and now by present profession a tinker?
The "transmutation" that transforms Sly the cardmaker into Sly the bearherd, and that in turn allows for an almost endless chain of occupational roles as the consumer economy demands, also encodes the possibility of social transformation, a challenge to rigid structures of social order.